Speaker 1: From Mahard.
Speaker 2: We're Innovation of Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hide and Ed Love Love.
Speaker 4: No from Bloomberg's world headquarters in New York. Home Caroline
Speaker 4: Hyde and.
Speaker 5: In the Big Apple back together, I'm Ed Lovelow. This
Speaker 5: is Bloomberg Technology coming up.
Speaker 4: Full earnings coverage ahead. We're going to be breaking down
Speaker 4: the results from Uber and sit down with the CEO
Speaker 4: Daracosta Shahi.
Speaker 5: Plus we'll speak to the CEO of Figma about where
Speaker 5: Adobe's twenty billion dollar purchase of the company stands, and
Speaker 5: take a look at new AI tools that they've unveiled.
Speaker 4: And we'll bring you the big takeaways from open AI's
Speaker 4: first ever developers conference as the AI startup on Veil's
Speaker 4: custom GPTs. Stick into these Uber earnings for peace to
Speaker 4: be welcoming to the show the CEO of the company,
Speaker 4: Donticles Ashahi, as well as of course our own Emi
Speaker 4: Chang of Blue magnes Ey.
Speaker 6: Take it away first, Caroline, thank you so much, Dara,
Speaker 6: thank you as well as always for joining us. So look,
Speaker 6: Uber shares have almost doubled this year, but they were
Speaker 6: a little volatile this morning on the upswing. Now, what's
Speaker 6: the message to investors who are seeing mixed signals here?
Speaker 2: Well, the message to investors is that we had another
Speaker 2: record quarter and that the business is accelerating and actually
Speaker 2: surprised us on on the top line, our growth bookings
Speaker 2: came in over thirty five billion dollars, up twenty percent
Speaker 2: on a constant currency basis, accelerated versus an already high
Speaker 2: growth rate in Q two. If you look at the
Speaker 2: number of trips taken on the platform, two point four
Speaker 2: billion trips this last quarter, that's twenty seven million trips
Speaker 2: taken every single day. That was up twenty five percent
Speaker 2: on and you're on your basis again an acceleration over
Speaker 2: last quarter where trips care twenty two percent. We did
Speaker 2: have a revenue accounting adjustment, and basically it was taking
Speaker 2: marketing costs and incentives. We do provide incentives to customers
Speaker 2: discounts to spur demand, and while they used to be
Speaker 2: classified as marketing cost in previous years, in previous quarters
Speaker 2: they were classified as contra revenue and our revenue then
Speaker 2: stated revenue grow ten percent. But this it's really the
Speaker 2: geography of marketing classified as contra revenue took down a
Speaker 2: reported revenue by eight percent doesn't affect the bottom line
Speaker 2: at all. So our adjustedy BADAC came in at a
Speaker 2: billion ninety two, up over one hundred percent on a
Speaker 2: year on your basis. And then of course we were
Speaker 2: again gap net income profitable with over two hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars in net income and something that we expect to
Speaker 2: be profitable going forward as an enterprise.
Speaker 6: Right your second quarter of profitability. Revenue is growing more
Speaker 6: slowly though over the last several quarters, so you know,
Speaker 6: what are your longer term what's your longer term view
Speaker 6: on where the growth is.
Speaker 7: Going to come from?
Speaker 6: And you know those who were concerned about market saturation, well, the.
Speaker 2: Revenue growth slowdown is again purely as a result of
Speaker 2: these accounting reclassifications. If you look at the business and
Speaker 2: the bookings growth, which is really consumer demand, both on
Speaker 2: the ride side and on the delivery side, both of
Speaker 2: them accelerated. So our mobility business grew growth bookings thirty
Speaker 2: percent on a year on year basis. It was an
Speaker 2: acceleration over Q two. We saw strength all over the world,
Speaker 2: but we saw particular strength in the Asia Pacific regions
Speaker 2: and Latin American regions as a result of some of
Speaker 2: the newer products that we've introduced, taxi two wheelers, motorcycles
Speaker 2: that you know are Uber motorbikes that can whish through traffic,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And then on the delivery, our gross bookings
Speaker 2: grow sixteen percent, again an acceleration over Q two when
Speaker 2: we grow fourteen percent, And that's just food delivery continuing
Speaker 2: to be super popular with consumers all around the world.
Speaker 2: It's our growing faster than the general category. We gain
Speaker 2: category position in nine out of ten top ten markets
Speaker 2: all around the world. And it's our number of grocery
Speaker 2: offerings expanding beyond just food into grocery, alcohol, pet food,
Speaker 2: whatever you want delivered to your home. We want Uber
Speaker 2: East to be there. So the strength continues the consumer,
Speaker 2: US consumer, global consumer continues to be strong, and that's
Speaker 2: definitely been a tail one for our business.
Speaker 6: You've been building out your advertising business, and I'm curious
Speaker 6: where you see the biggest opportunity there. Who's a target demo,
Speaker 6: where's the most upside, where's the best place to show
Speaker 6: folks in the app new advertising and how does that
Speaker 6: play out?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 2: The biggest part of our advertising business us our restaurants
Speaker 2: who are looking to improve their placement inside of the
Speaker 2: marketplace by targeting consumers or eaters who are likely to
Speaker 2: want to eat from that restaurant. And these are mostly
Speaker 2: small and medium businesses and enterprises like McDonald's or Wendy's, etc.
Speaker 2: Who advertise on our platform. And because we know so
Speaker 2: much about our consumers, all our data, et cetera, we
Speaker 2: can identify consumer segments who are likely to react, so
Speaker 2: to speak, to that advertising. And as a result, advertising
Speaker 2: revenue continues to grow at significant numbers. We targeted a
Speaker 2: billion dollars in advertising for next year. We're pacing on
Speaker 2: that target. We're going to exceed that target as well.
Speaker 2: The number of advertisers who are advertising on Uber is
Speaker 2: up seventy percent on a year on year basis. It's
Speaker 2: over four hundred thousand dollars four hundred thousand businesses as well. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the newer adverageising products that we're very excited
Speaker 2: about is actually branded advertisements. And you might see those
Speaker 2: branded advertisement advertisements when you're using your Uber app and
Speaker 2: you're waiting for your car. We might show you and
Speaker 2: add from an Apple or a credit card company or
Speaker 2: an upcoming movie. Our demographic consumer tends to be urban,
Speaker 2: tends to be very high income, and we have very
Speaker 2: big hopes for our branded advertising business as well.
Speaker 5: Dar We've gone deep here on the numbers, which Emily
Speaker 5: and Caroline know I love doing.
Speaker 7: But I just have a big picture question for you.
Speaker 5: What does Uber look like in five years from now
Speaker 5: and what are the steps that you take to meet
Speaker 5: your vision for Uber in five years time?
Speaker 2: Well, I think in five years time, we really want
Speaker 2: to be that operating system for everyday life for you. Personally.
Speaker 2: We want you to wake up and think about Uber.
Speaker 2: Am I going to have breakfast? Am I going to
Speaker 2: top up my grocery if I'm cooking tonight, going to
Speaker 2: the office, coming back to the office. We really want
Speaker 2: Uber to be there every day to help you in
Speaker 2: your life, to get you where you're going, and to
Speaker 2: save time from some of these tasks. You know, there
Speaker 2: are some people who like grocery shopping, but there are
Speaker 2: a ton of people who don't like grocery shopping. There
Speaker 2: are a ton of people who just want to eat
Speaker 2: at home, etc. And we want Uber to be that
Speaker 2: relevant life partner or life operating system for you really
Speaker 2: all over the world, it's.
Speaker 4: The freight unit. Dara still part of that vision in
Speaker 4: five years time. There's been talked from our own bluemerg analysis,
Speaker 4: so maybe that's fun off well.
Speaker 2: Freight is a very promising segment for us that is
Speaker 2: suffering now from kind of the great freight recession that
Speaker 2: you see create. Rates are coming down post pandemic as
Speaker 2: a result of an oversupply situation. There are a ton
Speaker 2: of digital brokers and actually analog traditional brokers going out
Speaker 2: of business now. One of our or big competitors, Convoy,
Speaker 2: for example, announced that they were going out of business
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, and that's those rates of
Speaker 2: hit or freight business as well. It was down twenty
Speaker 2: seven percent year on year. It lost some money, but
Speaker 2: the technology of matching supply and demand in a digital
Speaker 2: way we still think has incredible promise.
Speaker 7: As the freight.
Speaker 2: Business cleans up to some extent and some of the
Speaker 2: smaller players move out, we think that Uber Freight is
Speaker 2: going to emerge as one of the players with the
Speaker 2: best technology out there. We've actually invested into the transportation
Speaker 2: management part of the business, so not only do we
Speaker 2: connect you with a trucker to go from point A
Speaker 2: to B we're helping you with your whole freight network
Speaker 2: and using machine learning, using the power of the data
Speaker 2: that we have to create a more effective shipping network
Speaker 2: for you. We think that's a very promising business and
Speaker 2: at this point we are absolutely investing in freight and
Speaker 2: innovating around freight.
Speaker 6: Dara, Uber's been in the AI business for a long time,
Speaker 6: but I know you're integrating it more and more into
Speaker 6: the platform.
Speaker 7: Where have you.
Speaker 6: Seen the biggest value add so far and where do
Speaker 6: you expect to see the biggest value add from AI
Speaker 6: in the future.
Speaker 2: Well, AI is intermingled into every part of our platform,
Speaker 2: and you know, every single time you see a price
Speaker 2: on Uber, every single time we make an offer to
Speaker 2: a driver on Uber, every time we match you up
Speaker 2: with a vehicle route you, all of that is powered
Speaker 2: by AI. Some of the newer AI kind of innovations
Speaker 2: that you see with large language models are helping us
Speaker 2: automate some tasks that were difficult to automate previously or
Speaker 2: difficult to train machine learning algos previously. One is, for example,
Speaker 2: document transcription. If you put in your license, your insurance,
Speaker 2: background checks, et cetera, documents we can transcribe to those
Speaker 2: with the power of machine learning versus having humans look
Speaker 2: at it. Humans, as it turns out, often make more
Speaker 2: mistakes than algorithms. We actually combined both into a call
Speaker 2: it a superhuman. Another area that we are we think
Speaker 2: is quite promising is actually on the customer service side.
Speaker 2: Anytime someone reaches out to us in customer service, we
Speaker 2: have to be aware of you know, your history with Uber.
Speaker 2: We've got to be aware of the context, what's going
Speaker 2: on in that particular time, and also what are our policies,
Speaker 2: and our policies differ all over the world. Again, machine
Speaker 2: learning algorithms can go through all of that at the
Speaker 2: click of the button essentially and then get back to
Speaker 2: the customer, and we think actually provide an elevated customer
Speaker 2: service at a lower cost, something that's super excited for us.
Speaker 5: All right, Well, thanks there to Uber CEO Dara Kushashai
Speaker 5: and of course Bloomberg exactly changing out in SF. Really
Speaker 5: big morning actually on the Uber earnings front. A lot
Speaker 5: of volatility in the stock, but a wide ranging conversation
Speaker 5: are coming up here on Bloomberg technology. Open ai wraps
Speaker 5: up its first ever developers conference in San Francisco. We
Speaker 5: had the key takeaways from someone who is there on
Speaker 5: the ground, a good friend of ours out in SF.
Speaker 5: This is Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 8: GPTs are tailored versions of Chat GPT for a specific purpose.
Speaker 8: You can build a GPT, a customized version of Chat
Speaker 8: GPT for almost anything with instructions, expanded knowledge and actions,
Speaker 8: and then you can publish it for others to use.
Speaker 4: Open Ai CEO Sam Altman there at the company's first
Speaker 4: ever developers conference where they unveiled custom versions of Chat GPT.
Speaker 4: Let's go to Bloomberg's Rachel Metz. You are in the
Speaker 4: building assessing all the euphoria around it, but ultimately is
Speaker 4: this going to fend off the competition?
Speaker 9: Rachel, That is a great question. I think that you're
Speaker 9: starting to see them think about a little bit what
Speaker 9: are other companies doing? But also what can we do
Speaker 9: really well? How can we get people interested in using
Speaker 9: our products even more for different things? And the fact
Speaker 9: is that you can use something like chatchpt for all
Speaker 9: sorts of things, but it would work even better if
Speaker 9: you customized it and made it more something like a
Speaker 9: homework helping bot or a recipe bot, you know, those
Speaker 9: sorts of things, and give it a little extra data,
Speaker 9: train it in a certain way, and perhaps it'll be
Speaker 9: a little bit something like the app store that Apple
Speaker 9: really came up with years ago, where people weren't quite
Speaker 9: sure what to do it first with it right, and
Speaker 9: then after a while it was like, ah, this is
Speaker 9: what we do and people some things won't work, but
Speaker 9: some things really well with.
Speaker 5: That was something that a lot of folks are talking
Speaker 5: about that caught their attentions. Open Ai to do a
Speaker 5: digital store and introduce revenue sharing, kind of like X
Speaker 5: is done in some ways the platformforming known as Twitter.
Speaker 5: What do we learn about that future Open Ai store, Rachel.
Speaker 9: We know that there is going to be some looking
Speaker 9: over of the GPTs us they're calling them these customized
Speaker 9: chatbots before people are allowed to offer them to other people,
Speaker 9: similar to what Apple and Google et cetera do.
Speaker 7: With their respective app stores.
Speaker 9: It's not one hundred percent clear to me yet how
Speaker 9: the revenue share is going to work in terms of people,
Speaker 9: if people are downloading these things a lot, if the
Speaker 9: creator is going to get paid a certain amount of money,
Speaker 9: I think some of that stuff is still TBD.
Speaker 4: We want to thank you Rachel Metz bringing all the
Speaker 4: inside track what the event was like, ed Avity, Yeah.
Speaker 5: We have a quick talking tech And first off, Elon
Speaker 5: Musk's SpaceX is on track for fifteen billion dollars of
Speaker 5: sales in twenty twenty four. That according to Bloomberg sources,
Speaker 5: the company's Starlink internet business is showing growth such that
Speaker 5: it's expected to outpace and exceed the company's rocket launch business.
Speaker 5: Starlink could account for more than ten billion dollars in
Speaker 5: total sales for next year, one source told me. Plus,
Speaker 5: we Work shut as its doors, the company filing for
Speaker 5: Chapter eleven bankruptcy in New Jersey, This capping a tumultuous
Speaker 5: few years which the company has navigated a failed merger,
Speaker 5: COVID nineteen lockdowns, a blank check merger, and of course
Speaker 5: a slow return to office trend. We Work once commanded
Speaker 5: a forty seven billion dollar valuation back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 5: but it has listed nineteen billion dollars of liabilities. And
Speaker 5: then you look at who might be impacted as creditors.
Speaker 5: Caro a big name on their.
Speaker 4: Creditors credibility of one Massa Yoshi Son. Interestingly, here in
Speaker 4: New York, they've already dumped forty New York City office
Speaker 4: leases since that announcement, so notable moves already had, but
Speaker 4: we've got some notable moves that are happening in the
Speaker 4: worldern publicly traded companies and Apple's won to be keep
Speaker 4: an eye on on Yeah.
Speaker 5: And reported by who else Bloombo's Mark German a rare move,
Speaker 5: but Apples basically hit pause on developing most of net
Speaker 5: next year's software updates for iPhone, iPad, Mac and some
Speaker 5: other devices because it's trying to fix some bugs. German
Speaker 5: says that this delay has been announced internally to employees.
Speaker 5: He's now reporting those details and we'll bring you more
Speaker 5: on it. This is Blombog Technology. Figma is launching new
Speaker 5: AI features for its collaborative tool fig Jam. The new
Speaker 5: AI version aims to boost productivity with new features to generate, summarize,
Speaker 5: and sort files, among other things. Delighted to be joined
Speaker 5: by Figma's CEO Dylan Field and Caroline and I were
Speaker 5: talking about this this morning about the technology base for
Speaker 5: what you've announced. Where does the technology come from? Is
Speaker 5: it your own large language model, foundation model powering this
Speaker 5: or have you gone to a third party?
Speaker 10: All right, well, it's great to be here and thank
Speaker 10: you for having me. Just to back up a little bit,
Speaker 10: Figma's platform. We try to make it step people can
Speaker 10: go oh the way from idea to design to production
Speaker 10: and software code. And what we're launching today is our
Speaker 10: new fig Jmi features which will help it make it
Speaker 10: so that you can do meetings better and have more
Speaker 10: productive working sessions and brainstorms in big jam. And with
Speaker 10: fig Jmi, we're really excited to see how people use it.
Speaker 10: And we're using the our finacial model we're using is
Speaker 10: from open Ai. We're using GPT four, but yeah, definitely
Speaker 10: something that we could reconsider in the future. We have
Speaker 10: done a lot of work on the prompt engineering particular
Speaker 10: set we can make it set. We're able to better
Speaker 10: lower the four and make it set more people are
Speaker 10: able to have better working meetings, but also raise a
Speaker 10: ceiling and make it so you can do more in
Speaker 10: our product in fig jam.
Speaker 4: So you've outlined basically how this is going to help customers.
Speaker 4: Dnnan What does ultimately product design look like once AI
Speaker 4: has really taken charge? I mean, where will the human
Speaker 4: interact with AI? Where will ultimately be able to just
Speaker 4: put in a prompt and how well the latest fintech
Speaker 4: at built within a blink of an eye.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that ultimately.
Speaker 10: First of all, for fig JMAI, we're much more focused
Speaker 10: on how do you take the busy work out of
Speaker 10: creating great means and brainstorms. But if you think forward
Speaker 10: to Figma design and how we're going to take AI
Speaker 10: and put it into more of our products experience, whether
Speaker 10: it's design or even development with dev Mode, the new
Speaker 10: product we launched earlier this year, I can fig I
Speaker 10: think that AI will really help you get to a
Speaker 10: great first draft. It'll still take a great team to
Speaker 10: get to that final product and it though, I think
Speaker 10: though that it'll make it set you can do more
Speaker 10: and be even more productive and efficient, and we're really
Speaker 10: excited to see where that takes our users. But yeah,
Speaker 10: right now, I think it's more about how do you
Speaker 10: get away from the busy work, not how the robots
Speaker 10: take over?
Speaker 7: You cooled it.
Speaker 5: By the way, when we were chatting Caroline, we were like,
Speaker 5: which LM interesting choice on open AI. Look, it's been
Speaker 5: a year, Dylan since you announced that you would be
Speaker 5: acquired by Adobe. Is that actually going to happen? I mean,
Speaker 5: what chances that the deal falls through?
Speaker 10: We're very optimistic and really excited about what we can
Speaker 10: do with Adobe. I think that there's such comminary strengths
Speaker 10: that Adobe and Figma can bring together.
Speaker 7: So we've seen with.
Speaker 10: Adobe all their work with fire Orfly and what they've
Speaker 10: done with AI, and Figma can wearn a lot from
Speaker 10: Adobe there. But also Figma has gone into new audiences
Speaker 10: such as developers with dev mode, and we think that
Speaker 10: we can bring a lot to Adobe there as well.
Speaker 10: And we can wait you get this done and do
Speaker 10: or together.
Speaker 4: You've already been brainstorming about you as a consolidated unit,
Speaker 4: what actually you can bring to consumers, how your products change.
Speaker 4: It's interesting actually the EU regulators, we're worrying about how
Speaker 4: your use of AI might end up fending off competition
Speaker 4: even further, how do you think AI brought together with
Speaker 4: Adobe and yourself might change the game a little bit.
Speaker 10: Look, I think that all companies will benefit from AI,
Speaker 10: and I'm really excited to see how different companies are
Speaker 10: able to bring AI into their solutions just to make
Speaker 10: better products for everyone. So Adobe and Figma are no exceptions.
Speaker 10: I think that both companies will do great things here.
Speaker 10: And you know this is the very start. There's so
Speaker 10: much more to come, and it's really hard to predict
Speaker 10: the future, but obviously more building towards it.
Speaker 7: It's hard to predict the future. I'm still going to
Speaker 7: ask you to try.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of interesting like Figma's own momentum, right,
Speaker 5: That's why there was so much excitement about the deal
Speaker 5: with Adobe. What is your customermentum? Like, what is it
Speaker 5: you're carrying into this potential deal close?
Speaker 10: Yeah, obviously I can't share exact numbers, but it's been
Speaker 10: a very exciting your Figma. We've added I think about
Speaker 10: five hundred employees now since the deal is announced. We've
Speaker 10: introduced new products like dev Moode as well as advanced
Speaker 10: pro typing variables and how the user conference called fig
Speaker 10: with eighty five hundred people coming. Honestly, it's it's felt
Speaker 10: like we've been accelerating our pace and I hope to
Speaker 10: continue that acceleration and momentum into the deal.
Speaker 7: Clothes.
Speaker 4: Well, really nice to have you here talking us through
Speaker 4: at Figma. CEO Dylan Field, thanks so much for your
Speaker 4: time today.
Speaker 5: Welcome back to Bloomberg Technology.
Speaker 7: I'm Ed Loveloke and I'm Caroline Hyde.
Speaker 4: One of those days, let's get a quick check on
Speaker 4: the markets at the moment, because we're on a bit
Speaker 4: of a tear, we've got desire to get into tech
Speaker 4: names in particular. In fact, we have been up for
Speaker 4: eight straight days on the NASDAC and indeed on the
Speaker 4: NASDAQ one hundred longest winning streets. It's November twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: whilso adding the fuel to the far while we up
Speaker 4: more than eight percent. Because some of the big tech
Speaker 4: names are rising on the day, let's look over and
Speaker 4: look at some of the micro names, and in fact,
Speaker 4: Microsoft heading over towards you, had a new record high.
Speaker 4: At the moment, we're currently up by just four and
Speaker 4: three quarters of point, but that's still one point three
Speaker 4: percent to the upside. Data Dog absolutely flying New York
Speaker 4: based company up thirty percent.
Speaker 7: Let's call it.
Speaker 4: As we see this software company outperform, really raising its
Speaker 4: guidance on its back of its numbers uber as well
Speaker 4: managing to be on the higher site after its earnings
Speaker 4: as well, we see that it's really pushing towards well,
Speaker 4: the forecast being one that the investor bases liking were
Speaker 4: up two point four percent, and Apple still higher more
Speaker 4: than percent point higher. That's as we get a scoop
Speaker 4: coming from our own Mark German, who's saying, look, they
Speaker 4: might have to put pause to some software initiatives and
Speaker 4: indeed's improvements next year because as they want to iron
Speaker 4: out some glitches in particular that will be across their phone,
Speaker 4: that imag across the macro course and increase across most
Speaker 4: of their software. But what'll be looking at in terms
Speaker 4: of individual moves today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, some of the biggest names in megacat tech
Speaker 5: are kind of in the spotlight this week for political reasons.
Speaker 5: Officials from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe, we're all heading
Speaker 5: to Capitol Hill tomorrow for another Senate forum on AI's
Speaker 5: growing influence on American elections and democracy. The forum's part
Speaker 5: of a series of closed door discussions that Senate Majority
Speaker 5: Leader Chuck Schumer is been leading September to help members
Speaker 5: get up to speed on the technology and in the end,
Speaker 5: regulate it. We're going to dive deep into this conversation
Speaker 5: on this election day with Anjana Sosala, Professor of Responsible
Speaker 5: AI at Michigan State University. The way that we frame
Speaker 5: it in our Daily Politics newsletter is that today's election
Speaker 5: is kind of a testing ground for the events of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four and in the context of technology companies
Speaker 5: and social media companies, do you see it that way, Professor.
Speaker 11: Yes, absolutely. I think this is a test of multiple things.
Speaker 11: One is the provenance of some of the methods used
Speaker 11: to identify deep fakes. And also misinformation has gotten very
Speaker 11: sophisticated in today's world, So how can platforms enforce all
Speaker 11: these policies where given the volume of misinformation that's out there,
Speaker 11: what are some sort of content moderation policies that platforms
Speaker 11: can responsibly implement?
Speaker 4: And to that end, how much can artificial intelligence bea
Speaker 4: something that fights it as well as ads fuel to
Speaker 4: the fire ultimately onsider which side is going to be
Speaker 4: winning out here? How can wese artificial intelligence to help
Speaker 4: whites off this rise and misinformation.
Speaker 11: Well, there's definitely a lot of methods that platforms have
Speaker 11: used meta for example, users these methods called self supervised
Speaker 11: learning to identify deep fakes and fake news. And sometimes
Speaker 11: what happens is there'll be issues where we have a
Speaker 11: known source of misinformation and it's debunked and removed from
Speaker 11: the platform. But they can be very easy sort of
Speaker 11: you can duplicate essentially the same information and spread it
Speaker 11: in a different way. And so platforms have gotten good
Speaker 11: at those kinds of enforcement issues. So AI has helped
Speaker 11: tremendously in those kinds of cracking down on some known
Speaker 11: sources of misinformation. What is I think challenging from an
Speaker 11: AI perspective is things where there are half truths or
Speaker 11: rumors that can lead to maybe people not showing up
Speaker 11: in voting, like active you know, water turnout, disinformation effects.
Speaker 11: I think as are challenges for AI.
Speaker 5: Professor Caroline and I have covered election cycles and we've
Speaker 5: talked about social media companies be it meta x formerly
Speaker 5: known as Twitter, and in that period they have talked
Speaker 5: to us about the actions they're taking on content moderation,
Speaker 5: but also said that it's not their responsibility to oversee everything. Essentially,
Speaker 5: what's interesting about AI is it gives them a new
Speaker 5: technological tool. Is it a sufficient tool for them to
Speaker 5: get it right this time around?
Speaker 11: I think it's only one part of the arsenal of
Speaker 11: tools that they have, and in the sense that you know,
Speaker 11: it's not completely maybe platforms responsibility alone, because we also
Speaker 11: need a sort of a coalition of citizens and platforms
Speaker 11: working together to solve the larger challenge of disinformation and misinformation,
Speaker 11: especially given it's so easy to create and manipulate the
Speaker 11: truth and so easy to spread you know, aisstate, deep
Speaker 11: figs and so forth.
Speaker 4: I want to also bring to our audiences awareness that,
Speaker 4: of course today is not just a bad election and
Speaker 4: the focus, but it still continues to be one where
Speaker 4: particularly the government is looking at the impact of social
Speaker 4: media or mental health, particularly those of teens and younger
Speaker 4: adults on genre and at the moment we understand a
Speaker 4: form of Facebook employee and whistleblower, our turo Bajar is
Speaker 4: actually testifying before the Senate Subcommittee about social media, it's
Speaker 4: impact on team mental health, the crisis there and MET
Speaker 4: just put out statements today saying every day countless people
Speaker 4: inside and outside of matter are working on how to
Speaker 4: help keep young people safe online? How do you wait
Speaker 4: them at this moment fighting that particular areas of concern
Speaker 4: that society has a lot.
Speaker 11: So this is actually a somewhat of a troubling area
Speaker 11: because I think there were a lot of studies where
Speaker 11: people have tried to create, you know, an account posing
Speaker 11: as a teenager and the first within the seven or
Speaker 11: eight you know, sponsored ads, you see your clicks that
Speaker 11: you will end up seeing content that is kind of
Speaker 11: very troubling from a treteam mental health perspective. And so
Speaker 11: I think those are things where once again we need
Speaker 11: more transparency reports. Europe is doing that, asking platforms to
Speaker 11: provide more detail into how they're enforcing all these policies.
Speaker 11: So I think that's this is one area where maybe
Speaker 11: platforms also have a you know, a huge challenge. So
Speaker 11: I'm not you know, I'm sure they are doing a
Speaker 11: lot from their end, but as citizens and ASLAM when
Speaker 11: the lawmakers have a lot of questions, I think we
Speaker 11: need to ask platforms to be more truthful and transparent
Speaker 11: and share with us all their efforts and in content
Speaker 11: moderation how they're fighting all these issues.
Speaker 4: And Jana, it's great to have your expertise on the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you, come back. And Joanna Sosala, their professor of
Speaker 4: Responsible AI at Michigan State University, we thank her.
Speaker 7: Meanwhile, coming up.
Speaker 4: Now, how to accelerate workflows for financial services businesses with
Speaker 4: your guest AI. We will be joined by Il Shiner,
Speaker 4: CEO of the AI platform Black Hall, coming out of Stealthbed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm still with the earning story as well. Global Foundaries,
Speaker 5: a stock that's up seven percent, on track for its
Speaker 5: biggest jump since February. Be Expectations in the court have
Speaker 5: gone strong EPs forecasts for the current period, slightly disappointing
Speaker 5: revenue forecasts.
Speaker 7: And what is it talking about?
Speaker 5: Uncertain economic and geopolitical situation around the world. One of
Speaker 5: the smaller contract manufacturers for chips that we like to
Speaker 5: track this has been by Technology.
Speaker 4: It's an AI startup world and we're just living in it.
Speaker 4: One more player comes to like black Or coming out
Speaker 4: of Stealth, new AI platform for financial services in particular,
Speaker 4: it's just launched today announcing sixty million dollars in financing
Speaker 4: led by another than a sixteen z an Oak eight
Speaker 4: c FT plus a whole list of the who's who's
Speaker 4: a VC. Let's bring in Black Hole CEO al Shana,
Speaker 4: who is going to discuss, well, ultimately, what you're using
Speaker 4: sixty million dollars for? What problem are you solving with
Speaker 4: a much hyped area of artificial intelligence?
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. We we're very excited to
Speaker 3: announce our launch out of Stealth. We're using we're building
Speaker 3: a platform by leveraging AI. Is that streamline an end
Speaker 3: to end of all of the co workflow of the
Speaker 3: Black Office of CPS at the moment, and then are
Speaker 3: on financial services in general. Most of the problems that
Speaker 3: we focus on now is the wrong capacity issues for
Speaker 3: CPA firms where there are higher complexity of the tax
Speaker 3: code two hundred and thirty eight million tax returns done
Speaker 3: annually in the US, but at the same time, three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand accountants left the job in the last two
Speaker 3: years and there are sixteen percent less accountant than twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: so they're facing very severe capacity issues and the giving
Speaker 3: up on revenue and other things that they went to
Speaker 3: school in order to the study accounting to solve for
Speaker 3: instead of that doing very manyal work. So what we're
Speaker 3: doing is we're automating all of the pieces that are
Speaker 3: could be automated by a machine, and right now are
Speaker 3: struggling to find the right talent for the capacity constraint.
Speaker 5: I'll found this fun coast la Andrey general catalyst that's
Speaker 5: like the Who's who? A VC is backing you and
Speaker 5: you did it coming out of STEPH. I don't understand
Speaker 5: how does it work if you're in self? How do
Speaker 5: they even know about you? Or is it you kicking
Speaker 5: down doors and saying we have something really big coming.
Speaker 3: We do have something really big coming, but we do
Speaker 3: have an existing relationship with most of those investors. In
Speaker 3: my previous company, some of them were already investors. So
Speaker 3: when I started to work on this problem, I reached
Speaker 3: out and we started discussions and we didn't have to
Speaker 3: kick too many doors.
Speaker 7: Talk to us about the technology.
Speaker 5: Are you a maker of foundation or large language models,
Speaker 5: or do you use the underlying technology of a third
Speaker 5: party to then make an AI tool that's relevant in
Speaker 5: the financial services space.
Speaker 3: We do build a proprietary technology that consists not just
Speaker 3: from L and M, but from a combination of machine learning,
Speaker 3: automation vision. We do use third party technology for the LLM.
Speaker 3: We made a strategic decision not to build them model
Speaker 3: yet because it's extremely expensive. But with the pace of progress,
Speaker 3: we believe that in two years it will be a
Speaker 3: fraction of the cost to build it ourself. But ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the technology is not leveraging LM, which which
Speaker 3: proprietary technology. We're using the usual suspects, but it's relatively
Speaker 3: less than ten percent of what we actually offering. It's
Speaker 3: end product today.
Speaker 4: So tell us about your moat Ultimately, how do you
Speaker 4: ensure that anyone who wants to be really making their
Speaker 4: accounting work, making the job of a CPA efficient, only
Speaker 4: comes to black or not others that are building similar models.
Speaker 3: That's the main reason why we were in Stell for
Speaker 3: so long. We spend two years building the architecture, building
Speaker 3: the pipes, building the actual plumbing, or how we put
Speaker 3: the data, how we train a model to recognize the document,
Speaker 3: what I of a document classified automatically fetching the data
Speaker 3: from within the different document. They could be handwritten, they
Speaker 3: could be a PDF, they could be JPEG, and we
Speaker 3: put it in the right place in the tax software
Speaker 3: without requiring the CPA to change any workflow any tax
Speaker 3: doctors using today, and eventually the end product is a
Speaker 3: fully completed tax return ready for the CPA to review,
Speaker 3: as well as the work products that associate without like
Speaker 3: tie out, binder and so on. It does take more
Speaker 3: than AI to build that, a lot of inter understanding
Speaker 3: of the workflow and the processes, and we started relatively
Speaker 3: early on working with many different CPA firms and tax
Speaker 3: preparation firm to make sure that we understand the workflow
Speaker 3: end to end, even before it was cool to use
Speaker 3: the word AI. We automated very big piece of that.
Speaker 5: You're a serial entrepreneur and founder. You've been on this
Speaker 5: program with a different name, fund Box. I've written about
Speaker 5: FunBox and it's fundraising. Yeah, so you've got a pretty
Speaker 5: good lay of the land right now. How expensive is
Speaker 5: engineering talent? Like, I know you have a big chunk
Speaker 5: of cash now, but how far is it going to go?
Speaker 7: In the talent.
Speaker 3: Space, engineers are still expensive. I think, just like CPAs
Speaker 3: when you want to focus on the very high caliber
Speaker 3: of talent. Humans are still in high demand and very expensive,
Speaker 3: and especially when you start adding words like data science
Speaker 3: and AI, it makes them even more expensive. But the
Speaker 3: bottom line is that if you build the right team,
Speaker 3: you don't need to throw too much money on the problem.
Speaker 3: You don't want to higher before you have a product
Speaker 3: out there, and once you have the product, you need
Speaker 3: to be weekly. At Black OAR, we're being very efficient,
Speaker 3: not just because of the burn of the cash burn,
Speaker 3: but also an organization is becoming less efficient when you
Speaker 3: have too many people. That's something we would like to
Speaker 3: keep as long as possible.
Speaker 5: Black or CEO Shanna, thank you so much for your
Speaker 5: time here on Bloomberg Technology, thank you very much for
Speaker 5: having me.
Speaker 4: In a rare move by Apple, the company is hitting
Speaker 4: pause on development of this next year's software updates for
Speaker 4: the Iphoney, I've Pad, the Mac and other devices so
Speaker 4: that they can actually root out glitches in the code,
Speaker 4: none of them. Bloombog Technology is Mark goam and of
Speaker 4: course broke the story and mark how out of line
Speaker 4: with the usual policy? Is this for Apple?
Speaker 7: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, when iOS was as buggy as ever,
Speaker 1: Craig Federigi, the senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, implemented.
Speaker 7: What the company calls the Pact.
Speaker 1: The idea from twenty nineteen until now is you cannot
Speaker 1: add any new features into iOS during its development if
Speaker 1: it's going to break other features or make the operating
Speaker 1: system more buggy. So far in development of next year's
Speaker 1: operating systems, Apple has found that a lot of that
Speaker 1: is happening. A lot of new bugs are being introduced
Speaker 1: the software. So last week they implemented a freeze, a
Speaker 1: pause or a delay to the next stage of development
Speaker 1: and the next software dates. So for one week, all
Speaker 1: Apple's engineers can focus entirely on fixing bugs before moving forward.
Speaker 7: Brilliant scoop.
Speaker 4: We keep a track of all of it as always,
Speaker 4: Mark Gumman, and we thank you so much for bringing
Speaker 4: it today. Meanwhile, we want to talk about today's Bloomberg
Speaker 4: Big Take. It's focusing on Elon Musk's neuralink as it
Speaker 4: seeks a volunteer for its first clinical trial. Meaning look,
Speaker 4: it's looking for someone willing to have a chunk of
Speaker 4: their skull removed by a surgeon so a large robot
Speaker 4: can insert a series of electrodes super thin wires into
Speaker 4: their brain. Now, when the robot finishes, the missing piece
Speaker 4: of skull will be replaced with a computer the size
Speaker 4: of personally about a quarter and that's meant to stay
Speaker 4: there for years. It's job will we be to read
Speaker 4: and analyze the person's brain activity, then relay that information
Speaker 4: wirelessly to a nearby laptop or tablet.
Speaker 7: We volunteering.
Speaker 4: Actually, what's notable is the ideal candidate is under forty,
Speaker 4: like yourself. But actually our lives.
Speaker 5: Really I'm not volunteering, but yeah, okay. Sticking with Musk,
Speaker 5: his sprawling business empire has granted the billionaire a degree
Speaker 5: of power and global influence. That transcends the industry to reshaped.
Speaker 5: In a new weekly chat show and podcasts, Bloomberg editors
Speaker 5: and reporters break down the most important stories en Musk
Speaker 5: and his empire. We're joined now by two of them,
Speaker 5: Bloomberg's Sarah Fryar and Max Chafkin.
Speaker 7: Elon Inc.
Speaker 5: You We've actually all been talking about this for quite
Speaker 5: a while, but I guess I'm with you, Sarah. What
Speaker 5: is the broad concept of Elon Inc?
Speaker 12: This is, this is a man you can no longer
Speaker 12: think of just in terms of his disparate company there
Speaker 12: are six of them now, But he's also a geopolitical force.
Speaker 12: He affects our culture. He owns a major communication platform.
Speaker 12: He's in the car business, he's in satellites, you know,
Speaker 12: involved in wars.
Speaker 7: He has this power that is.
Speaker 12: So so vast and so interconnected that we felt that,
Speaker 12: you know, even as he becomes a more overexposed person,
Speaker 12: perhaps directing media with his own messages, he's under explained.
Speaker 12: His work is something that you know, takes some journalists
Speaker 12: who actually spoken to a lot of the people in
Speaker 12: the in the Musk Empire and who can tell you
Speaker 12: what's really going on.
Speaker 4: Ashley Vans of course, writes today's big take, which is
Speaker 4: about neuralink, and I mean, the opportunities of helping particularly
Speaker 4: people who are paralyzed, are extraordinary. But of course many
Speaker 4: would then say for that, you need trust, you need safety,
Speaker 4: not to mention with spaceships which blow up every now
Speaker 4: and then cars as well. Where are you starting with
Speaker 4: the enormous empire with which he oversees.
Speaker 13: Well, the show that will drop just in a few
Speaker 13: hours today, it's about groc, which is the new chat
Speaker 13: bot created by x dot ai Elon Musk's AI company,
Speaker 13: and I think it's a it's a really good example
Speaker 13: of what Sarah was just talking about. You know, x
Speaker 13: dot ai standalone tech company. They've recruited some really big
Speaker 13: names from DeepMind and Google, but in certain ways it's
Speaker 13: very closely connected to X you know, formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 13: because Musk is sort of using it as an enticement
Speaker 13: to sign up for this new higher tier of service,
Speaker 13: which I believe is called Premium Plus. It's it costs
Speaker 13: between sixteen and twenty two dollars a month, and Musk
Speaker 13: is kind of saying, if you do this, you'll get
Speaker 13: all the great benefits of X Premium Plus but you'll
Speaker 13: also get my AI company. So again it's hard to
Speaker 13: understand those companies stepple On Inc.
Speaker 5: Though, Right, these companies all have a direct relationship, and
Speaker 5: also we're good value here, right, So you get a
Speaker 5: bonus episode dropping, which I think is about musk relationship
Speaker 5: with unions. I find that fascinating because I remember covering
Speaker 5: Tesla March twenty twenty onwards when the pandemic hit and
Speaker 5: the union sensed an opportunity because of must position on
Speaker 5: the Fremont factory at the time. But tell us about
Speaker 5: episode two.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so we actually have two segments on the first episode.
Speaker 13: Episode two is a bonus episode with an Ashley Vance
Speaker 13: on Neuralink getting into the exclusive some exclusive detail about
Speaker 13: what we learned or what Ashley learned getting inside of
Speaker 13: that company on the union issue. It is super interesting
Speaker 13: because of course it gets down to Tesla's finances, but
Speaker 13: it also has a serious political component. You know, Sean Fain,
Speaker 13: the leader of the UAW, is really a new kind
Speaker 13: of union boss and in certain ways, you know, there's
Speaker 13: a thought that maybe Elon Musk and Sean Fayne are
Speaker 13: matched to each other. They're both sort of larger than life.
Speaker 13: They both have big ambitions. We will see what happens.
Speaker 4: Sarah, Ultimately, what do you want and listener to come
Speaker 4: away with? Because many would say we've had too much
Speaker 4: elon news across every outlet of late what's different here?
Speaker 4: How do you think you really educate in that manner?
Speaker 12: I mean, I think we want to explain, right, and
Speaker 12: I think these two pieces of news that you may
Speaker 12: have heard of, the groc Ai and the union fight
Speaker 12: that may be coming up, they both are are connected
Speaker 12: to Musk as a geopolitical figure and how he might
Speaker 12: affect the twenty twenty four elections, how he's talking with
Speaker 12: the governments around the world, what might be motivating him, right,
Speaker 12: and so we go into like his conflicts and his
Speaker 12: competition and what really drives must And so we get
Speaker 12: sort of behind the news and explain why.
Speaker 4: You should care, what you should care about.
Speaker 12: And what to look forward to as the world shifts
Speaker 12: around this extremely powerful man.
Speaker 4: Context Bloomberg, Max Chafkin, Seraphra really excited further, not one,
Speaker 4: but two that you're going to be getting dropping whichever
Speaker 4: cause area that you currently are digesting your podcast, because
Speaker 4: we've got many ed But meanwhile, I doesn't have this
Speaker 4: edition of Any Bad Techology.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to check out our podcasts wherever you get
Speaker 5: yours from New York Businesses, Bloomberg